


professional risks

by coraxes



Series: Author's Favorites [2]
Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eddis was in danger.  Eugenides offered his expertise.</p><p>(Drabbley AU in which Eugenides the God is also Eugenides the Thief.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	professional risks

Gen was never afraid of heights.  His grandfather taught him well on that; “we’re thieves, my boy, and every time we jump we trust our god to catch us.”

 

He wasn’t sure about gods, but Gen trusted himself.

 

* * *

 

The dreams started when he was young, too young to remember his exact age.  Unremarkable, mostly; they were strange, but so were most dreams.  The only odd thing about them was that so many of them revolved around gods.  Their faces and forms were different from time to time, changing with the era or the place, but Gen always knew who they were with the certainty only dreams could give. 

 

For a long time he thought this was normal, until he offhandedly told his mother about a particularly nice one, where he was the god Eugenides stealing from the Sky to help his sister Hephestia.  “It was just like the story,” he told her as he clambered up the tower wall, “only instead of thunderbolts I was stealing stars for her earrings—”

 

“You seem to dream of gods often,” his mother said.  She was already on top of the wall, watching his progress. 

 

Gen looked up at her, pausing in his climb.  _You don’t?_ his face seemed to say, and he took her silence for confirmation. 

 

* * *

 

(They weren’t memories.

 

Memories, perhaps, in the same way that someone might remember a conversation and have a twisted version of it echoed in their dreams, blended with fears and hopes and more memories; but not quite the real thing.

 

He was too much of a mortal to remember, at the moment.)

 

* * *

 

Not quite ten years before, the god Eugenides had looked over Hephestia’s shoulder and asked her what she was looking at.

 

That was the closest equivalent.  Gods were not flesh, not always, and Hephestia had not quite been corporeal at the time.  But that is the closest way to explain it to a mortal mind.  So: Eugenides had looked over her shoulder, where an image shimmered in the air, forming and reforming as they watched.

 

“The Sacred Mountain,” Hephestia had explained.  She was worried; he could hear it in her voice, see it in the way she hid her mouth behind her hand.

 

“Ah.”  Then, “Can you stop it?”

 

Hephestia had given him a look.  If she could stop it, she would not be worrying about it.  “Most of Eddis will be destroyed.”

 

Eddis had always been Eugenides’s favorite out of the cluster of countries he and his siblings watched over.  Gods and mortals were both fickle, but Eugenides still resented Attolia and Sounis for their abandonment.  Eddis had a _title_ named after him, and that was enough for his vanity.  He had squinted at the image of the exploding mountain ( _volcano,_ but no one would use that term for another few centuries). 

 

He had asked, “What can I do?”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t until he found Hamiathes’ Gift that Gen truly began to suspect that something was _off._

 

He had wondered before, of course.  He had recognized Moira immediately in his dreams, and her familiar greeting was odd; usually Moira was more obscure.  _Be cautious.  Do not offend the gods._ He had heard her—read about her—saying it a hundred times, but to him she had only said, _good luck._

 

But then he took the stone, saw Hephestia look at him and _smile_ and he knew, knew with a conviction he felt bone-deep, that Hephestia had not smiled at a mortal like that in centuries.  The small matter of the Gift would not be enough to attract her full attention. 

 

“What _am_ I,” he asked, but was not surprised when her smile widened and she disappeared. 

 

(The stories about Hephestia do not often include a streak of mischief as large as her half-brother’s.  Possibly because she was less inclined to show it to mortals, possibly because she had become so enmeshed with the image of a _proper queen_ that anything else became unimaginable.)

 

* * *

 

Gen woke up in the Aracthus with a scar on his cheek that had not been there when he entered.  Not a wound, a scar, old and tough; he could feel it pull when he spoke.  Pol noticed, as did the magus, but neither asked how he had gotten it.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll steal you Attolia and Sounis,” Eugenides had promised his half-sister, his eyes alight with the challenge.  “If you want, I’ll steal you the Continent—”

 

Hephestia had given him a stern look.  The Continent had its own god; just the one, but he was powerful enough that Hephestia had no wish to try him quite yet.  Her three kingdoms were enough. 

 

“Later,” Eugenides had promised. 

 

“Be cautious,” Hephestia had said.  “You won’t know what you are, and you’ll be mortal like the rest of them.  If you die there—”

 

Eugenides had winked at her.  “I know how to take professional risks,” he had said, and let himself fall.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely happy with how this turned out, but eh. May write more in this verse because anything dealing with human/god relationships is my Jam.


End file.
